


Amazing Graces

by N3kkra



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: AU, F/M, Human Pet AU, Humans didn't get far in space, I turned it into a fic, It was for fun, Mass Effect AU, Post-Break Up, There isn't a deeper underlying message, Written for a Class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-25 10:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13832025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N3kkra/pseuds/N3kkra
Summary: Garrus is getting over a shitty breakup and decides he needs a pet. His mother suggests getting a human and he agrees. What follows, he couldn't have seen coming.





	Amazing Graces

**Author's Note:**

> So, for class I had to write a 5-6 page story and I started with the idea 'alien has a human pet' and then I started imagining Garrus with Shepard as a pet and this happened. For the purpose of the class I changed the names and made the aliens more original, but when I edited it for this I changed it all to be more Mass Effect friendly. I also added more since I didn't have a limit on here. Please enjoy!

            “I think I need a pet,” Garrus sighed and rubbed his clawed hand over his face. The plates above his brows furrowed, the headache not the least bit affected by closing his eyes. Across the table from him, his mother smiled, the flat mandibles beside her face spreading wide. It was supposed to be comforting, but he didn’t see it.

            “I think that’ll be good for you-you need something to need you.” She reached forward and placed her hands on his. Finally, he looked up at her, his pale blue eyes sad. Her own gaze softened and she nodded reassuringly. “Don’t let this break up bring you down. I think a pet is a wonderful idea. How about a human? Those are becoming quite popular.”

            Garrus tilted his head in thought, lifting a hand to run his claws over the scales of his neck. “A human? I hear those can… learn to talk.”

            “If you teach them. They learn a lot of things, smart ones those are. Your father’s talked about getting one for your sister and me while you and he are on the Citadel. Maybe a toddler, something young,” his mother sat back, relaxing. The day was warm, Palavin's sun clear in the open sky. “I’ll even pay for the deposit on your flat, how’s that? You just handle finding the perfect human. Maybe train it to clean up while you’re at work?” It was a joking stab at how his apartment had always taken to look more 'lived in' than she thought it should. 

            Garrus considered this and then nodded. A human might work better than something that couldn’t take care of itself. He’d heard mostly good things about the bipeds; they had a tendency to get… annoyed with being pets, depending on their temperament. Some asari were trying to get them counted as a sapient race, but the salarians refused to let the motions carry weight. And since the turians had been the ones that first found them, they weren't keen on losing the new favorite pet. It came down to him needing one that understood its place and didn’t get any ideas about equality or freedom or whatever it was they got into their grey matter. With that decision made, Garrus finished lunch with his mother before departing the outdoor café, right in time to catch a charter that would take him to the Citadel.

 

            A human was harder to decide on than Garrus had expected. Because of their personalities, it was hard to mate them, and rather than having breeds or _kinds_ like most animals, they simply came in a range of color combinations and few looked enough alike to really call them ‘the same sort’ of human. Skin and hair colors ranged just as widely alone than tied to a ‘race’ as some of his research had supplied. It made no sense to him, but then he got into their differing mental capacities.

            Some were religious, and even within that, there were _many_ different kinds. Some had differing preferences and allergies to foods and plants. Some liked to wear this, others liked their hair fashioned that way. By the Spirits, they all differed on their likes for each other. The more research he did, the less animalistic they seemed.

            Garrus stared at the datapad and then turned the glass sheet over so it went to sleep and he didn’t have to continue reading. “Maybe I should get a pyjack instead?”

 

            The human breeder on the Citadel was fighting off the Asari for the Equal Treatment of Humans. AETH made it hard on him to get into the building, using horrid slurs he hadn't actually heard in use before. As a C-Sec agent, they said, he should be at the front of their cause, trying to help a race that needed access to rights otherwise denied them. It made him doubt what he was doing, but once he was inside and saw asari as well as turians and salarians working within the shelter, he felt better. 

            The salarian at the desk smiled at him and asked him if she could help him find anything. He told her he was looking for a human, but didn't know all that much about them. "Well," she smiled and walked over to a door that had a sign reading: Guests must be accompanied by employees. "Just follow me and maybe I'll clear up some questions."

            Through the door were fine kennels with a glass entrance allowing full view from the front. The rows were staggered so that they couldn't look right into the room across from them. Two were within each, or at least two beds stuck out from the walls on either side with a single toilet between them. Some of them wore finer clothes than others and some were naked –it was probably a personal preference, based on his research. His first question came when he saw a female curled up in the lap of a male, sitting on one of the beds so that their backs were toward the door. "What all do they need?"

            "About the same as any other pet; food, water, a safe place to sleep. The advantage of a human is that they're completely self-sufficient. Think of them as an organic VI once they've reached maturity –which occurres at a comparable rate to turians actually," the salarian stopped and gestured to a female who was standing close to the glass. She was tall and lean with dark brown skin and black hair that stuck out wide from her head. She shifted her hips, her brown eyes locked on him in a way he didn't quite like. 

            Garrus turned around and noted a male sitting cross-legged on the ground of his room with a datapad. "What's that one doing?"

            "They're smart, and get bored easily, they can amuse themselves with games and movies and books, so long as they've learned the language. Most of them don't speak a real tongue anymore. Since most are bred off-Earth they don't learn from their ancestors and either take on the speech of their owners or none at all." The salarian tapped on the glass and the human looked up, the fur above his eyes shifting one higher than the other. 

            The next room over had movement and when Garrus stepped up to it he froze, taken by surprise at the scene. Two males, one with black hair and the other with orange, were wrestling, taking each other to the ground with grunts and growls. The salarian came up and smiled, amused.

            "Those two are brothers," she stated and the orange haired one looked up, pausing long enough to smirk at Garrus with his thin, fleshy lips. Then the dark haired one proceeded to slap his brother across the ear. The orange haired one yelped and staggered away. 

            "I don't think I want violent ones. I have a full-time job, I can't really afford to be stressed over a pet," the turian said and frowned at the salarian, his mandibles sagging slightly. 

            "I understand completely.  _Usually,_ the females are less prone to violence, of course, that depends on the female," she smiled and gestured back in the direction they'd come. "Did you have any other questions?"

 

            "Heard you're looking for a little pet."

            Garrus stiffened and tried to resist showing it, but he knew the woman's voice behind him too well, and she'd noticed. "Yes, I have," he answered neutrally. 

            "I also heard the word  _human_ be thrown around," Kessa remarked with that cancerous tone of hers. He was already tired of her presence and couldn't understand why he'd spent two and a half years of his life with her. "Pyjak not enough to fill the void I left, hmm?"

           The headache from his paperwork spiked and Garrus turned around to face the dark turian. She was looking down at him, leaning against the half-wall behind his desk. "As nice as this conversation is, Kessa, I'm not particularly in the mood."

           "Seems like you're never in the mood," she replied and before he could respond, she had pushed off from the wall and sauntered off.

           A growl rumbled in his chest and Garrus spun back to his desk. The conversation had been brief, but the effect lasted the rest of the day.

 

            An ad caught his attention the next day while he drove home. There on a holoboard, a human female’s face was lit up, smiling. It said FREE in bold red writing above her so he stopped and stepped off his airbike. It was a local ad, not added to the extranet so as not to upset her with moving to a totally unfamiliar area. Her owner was moving off of the Citadel and couldn’t afford the fees to bring her. Since this style of advertising was on the phase-out, it was likely no one else had jumped on the deal yet. So Garrus typed the number of the owner into his datapad and sent a message.

            Before he got back to the bike, he received a message reading. _“Interested in Jane? I’m free the next two days, come by when you got time,”_ the virtual intelligence on his bike read to him through the headset he wore.

“Reply to him, tell him I’m on my way now.” The voice confirmed the message sent and was received. The glass of his hover bike’s windshield lit up to highlight the path to the new address. He was there in five minutes.

 

            “So, this is Jane,” the old, dark turian said, gesturing behind him to encourage the human female forward. She was young, as far as Garrus could tell from his research, in maybe her second decade of life. Her hair was dark red, a more rare hair color from what he’d seen. Her eyes were wide and bright green, set into a pale face with a thick speckling of dark freckles. She stood to Garrus’ shoulder easily, her back straight and her body poised to show him she wasn’t shy.

            She was cute, compared to some of the features he’d seen in humans. Her nasal bridge was narrow and swooped down to a buttoned end. Her jaw was defined but curved softly to a pointed chin. Her ears were small and symmetrical with the rest of her face. Even the patches of fur above her eyes were trimmed and plucked to make perfect, even lines. Her lips –soft, pink things– spread wide and pulled back over her teeth to show they were also flawless. Then she spoke, her voice was low and not at all what he’d expected, “Hello, I’m pleased to meet you.” She held her hand out to him and he looked at it curiously before taking it in both of his and giving it a firm shake. “I look forward to being yours,” she continued, without the slightest hesitation. He had never heard a human speak so well, and the only thing he could think about was how nice it would be to have someone to talk to.

           "Her breeding is pure, straight from Earth," the old turian was saying. Garrus tried to focus on his words, but he kept looking back at the human as she finished packing up a backpack. "Her father's name was Shepard, and her mother was Hannah, they're good names, not that anyone around here knows them. Anyway, humans usually have two names, theirs and then they take their sire's, so she's Jane Shepard on her papers. Jane's fine. If you want to call her something that's between you –if you end up taking her that is..."

           Garrus nodded and flicked his mandibles out. "I'll take good care of her."

           "Great," the old turian turned to the human and sighed. "Be good for the man, yes?"

           "I will," she smiled at him and hugged him like a child would their parent before leaving. Garrus' heart gave a weird beat and he finished the trade of information with the old turian. She couldn't eat turian food, but pretty much anything that asari or salarians ate was fine. She knew all the basics to keep herself alive as long as she had access to food –of which she could prepare herself. All in all, she would end up feeling more like a roommate that bummed off of him, or so the old man joked.

 

            Humans are strange.

            Jane had ridden on the back of his hover bike with all she owned backed into a bag strapped to her. She wrapped her arms around his solid form, hugged her thighs up to him, and pressed her face into his shoulder blade as they rushed through the air. Her soft hands gripped the straps of his uniform’s armor to keep her secure to him. There was no hint of fear in her as he took her back to his apartment.

            Once there, she’d waited for him to dock his bike and show her the way. The silence between them was comfortable, occasionally broken by his comments to her, all of which were little more than a command. His flat didn’t seem to bother her, even though he experienced a sudden fit of embarrassment at the current state of it. Most of the horizontal surfaces had _something_ piled up on it, whether it be hard documents or clothing or a dish that had yet to be put into the cleaning unit.

            “I’m sorry about the mess,” he apologized and cleared his throat, stepping around her so that he could get to the couch and low table. “Let me just clean this up and we can get you comfortable.”

            A soft laugh came from behind him and Garrus spun around, looking at the human female. “You’re cleaning up for me?” she seemed utterly surprised and shifted the weight of her backpack. “Allow me. Please, Athonias was diligent in my training, I think I can figure this out,” she waved around as she crossed the room. When she was closer, she looked him over more carefully, standing but a few inches away. “You look so tired….”

            “I am,” he breathed. He hesitated, looking down at her, watching as her green eyes rolled over his face. One of her hands rose so that she could run her soft fingers over the plates of his face. He didn’t realize how much like asari these humans were.

            It made him feel like he was talking to a woman, not a… pet. Garrus swallowed and shifted back from her.

            “I’m… going to go shower, I’ll,” he faltered and looked everywhere but at her, “let you do whatever. This is your home now, too.”

            Then he left her, all but running to his bedroom, sliding the door shut with a little too much force.

 

            Garrus opened the door and steam spilled out of his bathroom into the bedroom. He really needed to get the fan fixed. With a sigh, he went to his closet and pressed the panel that brought out his hanging clothes. It was right about then that he realized that singing came from the other side of his bedroom door. It wasn't from the TV, and it didn't come with any music, just the single voice he was getting used to now.

            It was an unfamiliar song, but words that he understood. “…T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear/ and Grace, my fears relieved,” she sang, the last word hanging long. It made him stiffen and go to the door, sliding it open slowly, quietly, listening as she continued. “…Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound/ That saved a wretch like me…”

            She stopped abruptly and Garrus looked up, seeing her stand in the kitchen, in front of the sink with her hands gripping the counter. Her face was tilted downward and tears fell from her eyes in a stream. He had seen some aliens do that, but never a human, it caught him off guard and made him think of the asari, as alike as they were in physical appearance.

            Somehow she hadn’t noticed him, or maybe she was pretending he wasn’t there. Either way, she sniffed long and deeply through her clogged nose, tilting her head skyward. She used both of her forearms to wipe each eye several times, her fists rubbing against them hard enough he questioned if she could still see.

            Then she let out a deep breath and whispered, “I once was lost but now am found/ T’was blind but now I see.” When the words were out she took in a long sigh and held it. Then she started on scrubbing the dishes in the sink before putting them into the cleaning unit. 

            Garrus closed the door and leaned against it, the image of the _woman_ plastered in his mind’s eye, water streaming from her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, Subscriptions, and Kudos do WONDERS. Thank you for reading!


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